Eighteen Torrance High School wrestlers allegedly molested by their coach have filed suit against the Torrance Unified School District, charging its administrators ignored sexual abuse allegations against the coach for years and enabling him to prey on them in the locker room.

“They gave the keys to the boys’ locker room to the predator with no supervision,” said attorney Ronald Labriola. “You’ve got boys who were being told to drop their drawers, boys who were being told to manipulate their penis, open their butt crack. You’ve got fully naked massages on boys’ buttocks and upper thigh area, touching their genitalia. None of this should have ever happened.”

The lawsuit, which also names the boys’ parents as plaintiffs, is the largest of three civil cases now filed against the district on behalf of the boys on Snider’s teams. Nearly all of the 26 boys allegedly molested, primarily in 2013 and 2014, have pursued legal action.

One after another during that hearing, wrestlers testified that the coach made them stand in front of him, sometimes alone and sometimes in a line with others, sometimes in their underwear and sometimes naked. Boys, ages 13 to 15, said Snider told them to pull down their shorts. Sometimes he touched their private parts.

The boys said they believed it was a necessary part of the wrestling program and did what the coach told them to do.

The man said he told no one about what happened until he was 16. In 2007, he reported the allegation to a secretary at Torrance High School on the phone, and visited the Torrance Unified School District headquarters and Madrona Middle School in person. He also submitted a report in writing.

“The school district did nothing with this information,” attorney Skye Daley said. “This case is about their failures and their negligence in protecting their students.”

“The criminal case started because other kids from different teams came forward and said this coach is doing this and it’s inappropriate,” Daley said. “It’s our understanding these skin checks were known to the administration prior to his removal.”

Daley and his firm, Manly, Stewart and Finaldi, and Labriola’s practice, The Senators Firm, jointly won a nearly $140 million payout from the Los Angeles Unified School District in 2014 for 81 children sexually abused by their teacher, Mark Berndt of Torrance, while they attended Miramonte Elementary School in South Los Angeles.

Berndt played sexual games with his young students, putting his semen on cookies he fed to the children.

“I believe that we are going to find through the course of discovery that the failures of the (Torrance) administration in protecting these kids is going to look like a lot like the failure of LAUSD in Miramonte,” Daley said.

The Torrance lawsuit seeks damages for negligence in hiring and supervision, fraud, infliction of emotional distress, breach of fiduciary duty, sexual harassment and public entity liability for failure to perform its mandatory reporting responsibility.

“The bottom line is there were many red flags over a lengthy period of time that the school district ignored and, in doing so, disregarded their primary obligation of protecting the children under their care,” Labriola said. “As a result, over 25 kids have been sexually abused and are going to pay the price for it for a long, long time over the course of their lives.”

Some of the boys are in counseling and have changed schools. Some have faced jeers and ridicule from other students, Labriola said. Many already testified in court and will be forced to do so again at trial.

TUSD spokeswoman Tammy Khan said the lawsuits have been referred to the district’s legal counsel.

“The Torrance Unified School District has cooperated with the Torrance Police Department in the investigation into the allegations of Mr. Snider’s misconduct,” Khan said in a statement. “On Jan. 26, 2015, when a Torrance High School employee learned of possible inappropriate conduct by Mr. Snider, Torrance High School administration acted immediately, by placing Mr. Snider on administrative leave. The district immediately notified the Torrance Police Department.”

Larry Altman has covered crime and court proceedings in Southern California since 1987. A graduate of Cal State Northridge, where he served as editor of the college newspaper, Altman has worked for the Daily Breeze since 1990. The Society of Professional Journalists named him a "Distinguished Journalist" in Los Angeles in 2006. Altman's work was featured twice on CBS' “48 Hours” and he appeared eight times with “Nancy Grace," who called him "dear." He has covered hundreds of homicides and many trials. Altman has crawled through a mausoleum to open a coffin, confronted husbands who killed their wives, wives who killed their husbands, and his coverage helped put a child molester and a murderer in prison. In his spare time, Altman is an avid Los Angeles Lakers and Dodgers fan, is the commissioner of a Fantasy Baseball league with several other current and former newspapermen, runs a real estate empire and likes to watch old movies on TCM.

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